Do you find the Portal useful? We’re asking you to please take a minute today to keep our work going.
This year we added 1.2 million pages of material to the Portal and we need your investment to continue growing.
We’re only $100,000 away from meeting our year-end goals for the Challenge Grant we received from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
During our spring appeal, the average donor gave $30, but if even half the people who use the Portal this month give $5,
we’d meet our entire goal to raise matching funds for the endowment immediately.
The Portal connects people to the past, and your support will ensure its future.

The month of March, 1836, ranks overwhelminglyas the bloodiest and yet, in one respect, the brightestin the annals of Texas. On the second day of thatmonth, at Washington on the Brazos, the chosendelegates of the people, fifty-two being present,unanimously declared Texas to be a free, sovereignand independent Republic, according to Gen. SamHouston, their most distinguished colleague, theopportunity of subscribing his name to the solemndeclaration, the second of its kind in the history ofthe human family, on his birthday, an event notdreamed of by his noble mother when in RockbridgeCounty, Virginia, on the second day of March, 1793,she first clasped him to her bosom. On the 4th ofMarch, Gen. Houston was elected commander-inchiefof the armies of the Republic, as he had beenin the previous November of the armies of the Provisional,or inchoate, government. On the 11th,Henry Smith, the Provisional Governor, one of thegrandest characters adorning the history of Texasand to whom more than to any one man, the causeof Independence was indebted for its triumph, surrenderedhis functions to the representatives of thepeople. On the 2d, Dr. Grant and his party,beyond the Nueces, were slaughtered by Urrea's dragoons,one man only escaping massacre, to be heldlong in Mexican dungeons and then escape, tosurvive at least fifty-five years, with the fervent hopeby hosts of friends that he may yet be spared manyyears to see a commercial city arise where he hasresided for over half a century. The veterangentleman referred to is Col. Reuben R. Brown, ofVelasco, at the mouth of the Brazos. On the 6ththe Alamo and its 182 defenders went down toimmortality under the oft-repulsed but surgingcolumns of Santa Anna. On the 19th Fannincapitulated to Urrea on the plains of Coleto. Onthe 27th be and his followers, to the number ofabout 480, were massacred in cold blood, under thespecific orders of that arch traitor and apostate toliberty, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, whose life,twenty-four days later, when a prisoner in theirhands, was spared through a magnanimity unsurpassedin the world's history, by the lion-hearteddefenders of a people then and ever since, by prejudicedfanatics and superficial scribblers, characterizedas largely composed of outlaws and quasibarbarians,instead of being representatives, as theywere, of the highest type of American chivalry,American civilization and American liberty.

While these grand events were transpiring, theAmerican settlers on the Guadalupe, the Lavacaand farther east were removing their families eastwardly,flying from the legions of Santa Anna asfrom wild beasts. Many had no vehicles and usedhorses, oxen, sleds or whatever could be improvisedto transport the women, children, bedding and food.Among those thus situated were two isolatedfamilies, living on Douglas' or Clark's creek, abouttwelve miles southwest of Hallettsville, in LavacaCounty. These were John Douglas, wife andchildren, and -Dougherty, a widower, withthree children. The parents were natives ofIreland, but had lived and probably married inCambria County, Pennsylvania, where their childrenwere born and from which they came to Texas in1832. They were worthy and useful citizens, andlived together. They prepared sleds on which totransport their effects, but when these were completedthe few people in that section had alreadyleft for the east. On the morning of the 4th ofMarch Augustine Douglas, aged fifteen, and ThadeusDouglas, aged thirteen, were sent out by theirfather to find and bring in the oxen designed todraw the sleds. Returning in the afternoon, at ashort distance from home, they saw that the cabinswere on fire, and heard such screams and warwhoops as to admonish them that their parents andkindred were being butchered; but they wereunarmed and powerless and realized that to savetheir own lives they must seek a hiding-place.This they found in a thicket near by, and thereremained concealed till night. When dark camethey cautiously approached the smoldering ruinsand found that the savages had left. A briefexamination revealed to them the dead and scalpedbodies of their father, mother, sister and littlebrother and of Mr. Dougherty, one son and twodaughters, lying naked in the yard-eight soulsthus brutally snatched from earth. Imagination,especially when assured that those two boys werenoted for gentle and affectionate natures, as personallyknown to the writer for a number of years,may depict the forlorn anguish piercing their younghearts. It was a scene over which angels weep.There were scarcely anything more than paths,and few of them, through that section. Augustnehad some idea as to courses, and speedily determinedon a policy. With his little brother he proceededto the little settlement in the vicinity of